Yanira Castro and Storyboard P at BEAT Festival in Brooklyn

By GIA KOURLAS

September 15, 2013

Downtown Brooklyn is the hub for the BEAT Festival, a site-specific performance series that hosted two dance artists at the Brooklyn Museum over the weekend. It was more than a little random. Yanira Castro’s choreography is tight, contained and orderly; in “Nancy” she offered four interpretations of the same solo, which was inspired by Nancy Ellis, a longtime collaborator.

Storyboard P, a fascinating street dancer born in Brooklyn, doesn’t believe in choreography. He refers to his style as “mutant,” meaning that his influences come from everywhere, from ballet to boogaloo.

In “Nancy,” seen Friday night, Kirsten Schnittker, Tess Dworman, Anna Marie Shogren and Pamela Vail performed consecutively to an electronic score by Stephan Moore. Dancing on a 12-foot-square raised stage with fluorescent beams designed by Kathy Couch, they demonstrated their individuality.

In this glorified movement study, which became increasingly laborious to endure, nothing was identical, even as choreography was repeated: outstretched arms with quivering hands, pivot turns and back-and-forth skips as one arm rippled overhead.

The BEAT Festival Storyboard P in “Magna Carta Story,” which tried to translate Jay Z’s music into street dance, at the Brooklyn Museum.

Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times

Ms. Schnittker, tall and precise, appeared first and offered a clear rendition of the solo. Ms. Dworman, dancing faster, blurred footwork and fought for her balance in still poses, making the choreography a joyless task. Ms. Shogren, the most dynamic of the four, gave the well-worn phrases a jolt of life, and finally, the technically proficient Ms. Vail was painstakingly dry.

In her performance portraits — “Nancy” is her third — Ms. Castro is obsessed with microscopic renderings of movement. But such attention to detail was more satisfying in Storyboard P’s “Magna Carta Story,” an improvised piece seen Saturday afternoon that tried to translate Jay Z’s music into street dance. Storyboard P was joined by two other performers, Ghost and Ivy.

Storyboard P is an incredible dancer, but the strange format — the performance took place in the museum’s rotund Beaux-Arts Court in front of oddly arranged seating — and the rambling postperformance discussion threatened to sully the memory of his spooky power. His articulate style of dancing — inspired by film techniques like stop animation and, specifically, Claymation — at first amazes and then glides into the mystical.

Rolling his shoulders — up, down, forward and back — as his knees bent and buckled into one another, Storyboard P sunk onto the insides edges of his shoes; rising, he arched into a deep backbend while the gulf between his feet widened to resemble a warped fourth position. Twisting, he swirled on both feet and then spun on one, his back foot pointed behind as if he were tracing figures on ice.

It was jaw-dropping. But moments later the magic happened again: he lowered himself to the floor, knees crossed, and reached forward until his body unfurled, ribbonlike. A leg, curling from behind, slowly propelled him upright, and as he rose he continued to twist, balancing weightlessly on the tips of his toes.